Illustration: Identity Crisis #1, one of the which Valerie D’Orazio helped edit

Valerie D’Orazio worked at DC Comics from 2000 to 2004, first as a Creative Services Coordinator and then as an Assistant Editor, editing books such as Aquaman, Batman: Black and White, and JLA. After leaving DC, she has talked about how much of a toxic environment it was and how she was sexually harassed, but more recently she has released an entire timeline of her time at DC and exactly what happened and it’s quite horrifying.

The person who sexually harassed her the most at DC was Mike Carlin, former VP of DC itself. Early on in D’Orazio’s career, she was warned to “watch her back” because her predecessor had been fired for a minor offence and it was thought that she was singled out for being a woman. This early warning turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg, as Carlin’s behavior around D’Orazio (and, later on, it’s revealed all women) is shown to be creepy and possessive. And yet, even though Carlin was demoted from VP, he was still in charge of a number of books. D’Orazio, as she points out, helped edit a number of well-selling comics and yet was never promoted outside of Assistant Editor.

I would suggest reading the entire chronology of what happened just to see how toxic a workplace environment can be and what the mindset on DC was around 2000-2004.

D’Orazio’s Twitter feed provides some additional insight (such as a journalist who encouraged her to sue DC, but then said she didn’t believe her), as well as the, frankly, creepy as fuck behind-the-scenes reason for Identity Crisis: